The anatomy of anger, envy, sadness, and fear

Negative emotions do us a great favor – they save us from ourselves.
They’re mysterious signals, that oftentimes surge for “no apparent reason”, urging us to pay attention and change what we’re doing. Emotions that generate unpleasant feelings have been called sins (anger, envy), rejected in “polite” interaction (jealousy, frustration), or identified as unhealthy (sadness, shame). Culturally we’re taught to suppress these feelings, or medicate them, and punish ourselves for feeling them. Because these feelings are mostly seen as unpleasant, they are often called “negative” emotions… although “negative” is a misnomer. Honestly, if you think about it, emotions are not inherently negative or positive, they simply are a feeling to situations that happen. In esoteric practices, for example, they are distinguished by much more than whether they feel good or bad. Beneath the surface, every emotion orchestrates a complex expression of changes in motivation…